HUD finds move to Win95 a bigger job than it planned

By Bill Murray

Apr 28, 1997

Training HUD personnel to use a Windows-based PC with a mouse is proving one of the biggest challenges for the HUDWare II rollout, Rounds said. Hundreds of HUD personnel have spent years using MS-DOS versions of ASAP Harvard Graphics, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect 5.1 running on 286 and 386 PCs. The agency is using classroom, computer-based and video training to educate HUD employees.

Many users only recently moved to Windows 3.1 and will have to learn Microsoft Office 95 applications such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Rounds said HUD has had to allay users' fears.

Given the HUDWare II headaches-and given recent technological advances-Yohai said he plans use World Wide Web browsers as interfaces when the department eventually rolls out HUDWare III.

To run HUDWare II, HUD replaced its remaining 286 and 386 PCs last year. The standard desktop system is a 486 with 16M of RAM and a 100M hard drive.

According to the agency's plans, all personnel will have access to the same office automation software, as well as data stored on mainframe systems, through HUDWare II. Personnel will also have access to an agency calendaring program and several HUD bulletin board systems.

Meanwhile, HUD is moving from an all-Novell NetWare system to a mixed network operating system environment that includes Windows NT 4.0 and NetWare.

Through the HUDWare II effort, HUD help desk personnel will have configuration and support software to let them work remotely on PCs that have problems, Rounds said. Microsoft Systems Management Server, which the agency is also using for remote installation, runs on Windows NT 4.0 and includes desktop management tools.